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The Hazards of the Couch

By Roni Caryn Rabin January 12, 2011 2:43 pmJanuary 12, 2011 2:43 pm

Sean Marc Lee/Getty Images

Many of us sit in front of a computer for eight hours a day, and then go home and head for the couch to surf the Web or watch television, exchanging one seat and screen for another. Even if we try to squeeze in an hour at the gym, is it enough to counteract all that motionless sitting?

A mounting body of evidence suggests not.

Increasingly, research is focusing not on how much exercise people get, but how much of their time is spent in sedentary activity, and the harm that does.

The latest findings, published this week in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology, indicate that the amount of leisure time spent sitting in front of a screen can have such an overwhelming, seemingly irreparable impact on one’s health that physical activity doesn’t produce much benefit.

The study followed 4,512 middle-aged Scottish men for a little more than four years on average. It found that those who said they spent two or more leisure hours a day sitting in front of a screen were at double the risk of a heart attack or other cardiac event compared with those who watched less. Those who spent four or more hours of recreational time in front of a screen were 50 percent more likely to die of any cause. It didn’t matter whether the men were physically active for several hours a week — exercise didn’t mitigate the risk associated with the high amount of sedentary screen time.

The study is not the first to suggest that sedentary activities like television viewing may be harmful. A study last year found that men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching TV and sitting in their cars were more likely to die of heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less, even if they exercised. And a 2009 study reported that young children who watch one and a half to five and a half hours of TV a day have higher blood pressure readings than those who watch less than half an hour, even if they are thin and physically active.

Another small study found that when overweight adults cut their TV time in half, they burned more calories than those who watched five hours or more a day. Children whose TV time is cut tended to eat less, but that wasn’t true for adults. And the light activities adults filled their time with, like reading and playing board games, actually burned more calories than watching TV.

In both the United States and Britain, people are spending three to four hours a day on average watching television, said the study’s author, Emmanuel Stamatakis, of the department of epidemiology and public health at University College London.

“This is excessive,” he said. “It is more than 20 percent of total waking time for most people.” And, he added, “it’s 100 percent discretionary.”

During the study’s follow-up period, from 2003 to 2007, 325 men died of various causes, and 215 suffered a heart attack or other cardiac event. Even after adjusting for differences in weight, smoking, occupational physical activity and risk factors like diabetes, high blood pressure and other longstanding illnesses, as well as marital status and social class, those who spent four hours or more of their leisure time in front of a screen each day were 50 percent more likely to have died. Those who spent two hours a day in front of a screen for entertainment were 2.2 times more likely to have had a cardiovascular event.

Recreational screen time has an “independent, deleterious relationship” with cardiovascular events and death of all causes, the paper concluded, possibly because it induces metabolic changes.

One possible mechanism, demonstrated in animal studies, is that being sedentary may affect lipid metabolism. Prolonged inactivity appears to sharply reduce the activity of an important enzyme called lipoprotein lipase, which is responsible for breaking down circulating blood lipids and making them available to muscles for energy, Dr. Stamatakis said. Lowered enzyme activity leads to higher levels of fats and triglycerides in the blood, and to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. Exercise has very little impact on the enzyme’s activity, he said.

Extended sitting may also lead to high levels of low-grade inflammation, which can also lead to heart disease, Dr. Stamatakis said. A marker of low-grade inflammation called C reactive protein was about three times higher in the study participants who spent the most time slouched in front of a screen.

The study focused on recreational screen time because it’s the easiest to curtail, Dr. Stamatakis said. But he encouraged employees who work at computers all day to get up and take breaks and short walks periodically.

Would it matter if I stand while watching TV?
Most of white collar people activities are carried out while sitting. Should it affect or change any labor laws to allow workers to conduct meetings while standing up?
What practical tips or conclusions can be implement as a result of these studies if doing daily exercise is not enough?

This is exactly why I’ve been cutting down my time spent on Facebook. I don’t know why FB feels it needs to update itself. Now all of our interests are linked slowing down the news feed with more information and less time to get at personal status updates.

Half of the time this news feed is so trite too… if you have Google Reader, you can get the information much faster. If the article turns into a “must read”, it will show up on the Facebook feed a few days later. By the time that happens, I’m exhausted.

I was going to cut the New York Times page off of Facebook too because of the same information showing up… but then I get occasional interesting political columns that I don’t have added to my feed. So yeah… interesting.

The key to cutting back on the internet: simplify, simplify, simplify! (and to get off Facebook)

I agree – I feel like we keep seeing these warnings about inactivity but the ideas generated to respond to the problem and minimal at best. It isn’t possible for every office to redesign itself with Pilates balls for chairs or standing desks, etc. Some of us just have to make do with what we have. I still have to work 8 or more hours each day and while I do a lot of walking around in that time, I don’t know that there’s much else I can change. In the evenings, if I’m watching TV, I’m always doing something else at the same time, such as knitting or even doing stretching exercises. But I have only so much time, income, and – well, to be honest, sometimes I’m tired when I get home from work and don’t feel like spending the whole night doing something active. If I’ve been found to be in perfect health and of normal weight otherwise, what am I supposed to do to protect myself in a job that requires so much sitting? Frankly, I’m getting a little frustrated with these warning stories that offer no accessible solutions.

Let’s not be so quick on the draw to malign and trash the humble couch. It has multiple potential uses. It’s not only designed for the “mouth-agape, drool-in-the-corner-of the-mouth, self-lobotomized soap-opera watching, American Idol watching, and reality TV watching blobs of protoplasm.

But really. What better piece of furniture for your kids to benignly destroy… by turning it into an in-house trampoline. It’s probably their only real exercise. You ask, “What about their bed?” Not as much fun as destroying a communal piece of furniture. And… it’s more fun to know that it’s really going to piss off mom and dad. Especially when the punishment is probably going to be, “Only 1 McDs apple turnover for dessert tonight… instead of the usual 3. And now take a timeout!”

Also, when the time comes after a few years, and you decide to actually remove all of the cushions to vacuum… you never know what you’re going to find. An exciting prospect. Money, jewelry, that long lost roll-your-own-natural-cigarette, phone numbers, wrappers, and other incriminating evidence that you can garbage before the inquisition begins.

And one more thing. If it wasn’t for the lowly settee… many of us would probably not be gracing the world with our presence. Especially those of us from the colder climes. Many of our moms and dad managed to cleverly (via innovation) use that 7 minutes while their mom and dad were decorating the Xmas tree.

When you hear: ‘Voulez-vous “coucher” avec moi ce soir?’ You may think of Labelle. But EE Cummings and Tennessee Williams used the polite phrase before we heard it in Lady Marmalade. (I know Kim. Showing my age again)

Enjoy le couch… le coucher… and make it into what you wish. A trampoline, a petrie- dish, a mind-numbing-dumbing coffin, or a vehicle with which to say … “I love you… and hurry, Your dad‘s going to be back any minute.”

What were the study participants bio-makers before the study was conducted? That might be the better way to publish these studies. I don’t think there’s enough information for anyone to modify their activities to address these risks. Most jobs are sit down jobs. Unless your employer forks over over $5,000 for those walking treadmill desks, there’s not much you can do if exercising at the gym didn’t curtail the effects of sedentary work and recreation.

It’s understandable that for a white collar worker, after 9 hours at the office and about two hours of commute, the easiest thing to do is to sit on front of a computer or TV screen. People probably don’t want to engage in intellectually challenging activities like playing board games or reading a book (even if the game is relatively easy and the book is light), and they’re too physically tired, too drained out at the end of the day, to do lots of housework or exercise. A sedentary work, with all the stress and uncertainty that it involves nowadays, just tends to lead to a sedentary lifestyle overall. The inertia of a sedentary work leads to inactivity at home.
Maybe a light physical activity like Tai Chi (or a light yoga), which can be done pretty much anywhere, could help somehow.
But if the assumptions made by the study are true, this is basically another thing that the modern worker has to worry about without being able to do much about it.

This has been making the rounds for a few months now..
I just started a new job and asked for a adjustable desk, one that can be lifted, so as to accomodate standing and can be set for sitting as well. I love it, and typically spend the first half of every day standing at my desk.
The problem, however, is that I seem much more distracted when standing, and I’m not sure yet what to attribute this to, but I just feel less productive in general while in standing mode.. but healthier!
I guess I’ll just try to get more done in the second half of the day!

So, what is it? The siting? The TV? The possibility that many of these TV sitters may be snacking? Is it safer if I am laying on the bed when I’m watching? Can I sit while reading? Should I look for another job that doesn’t involve a desk and a chair? The walk from Manhattan to Brooklyn each night is useless? Frankly, this post seems worse than useless as health advice.

“How about sitting and reading? Would that have the same deleterious outcome?”

Exactly. This demonizing of the Internet and TV is absurd. In the Internet age, the doomsayers cry, people don’t read enough books anymore. Well, all of our great writers through the centuries, and of course their tens of millions of readers as well, created the canon of Western literature . . . . sitting down. We’re supposed to bemoan that too?

Fellow desk workers, unite. Stand up. Get off your duff. Do some, at least, of your work while standing. On the phone? Stand up. Reading a report on the computer? Do it on your feet. Monitor and keyboard too low down if you’re standing? Easy to fix.

There is no excuse for sitting on your rump all day bemoaning your sedentary state. You can do something about it — and you don’t have to ask your employer for expensive modifications of your workstation.

Head on over to wherever your office keeps reams of copy paper. Grab yourself a couple of reams of legal size paper (letter is not big enough for most keyboards). Put the keyboard on top of the paper. Take a few books, or more reams of paper, and put them under the monitor. You’ve just made yourself a standing desk with very little expenditure.

Now use it. Practice typing while standing. You’ll be amazed how fast you get used to it. Once you can do the work work standing up, try walking in place or doing leg lifts or stretches.

I’ve thought about this and am concerned. As a digital artist, my career is completely centered around the computer. Many days I work 12 hours or more- all sitting. I honestly can’t think of any way to change this other than changing careers. But what career is available that would be as lucrative as a desk job yet provide more mobility? I don’t think such a job exists anymore.